The Minnesota House of Representatives is scheduled to debate Thursday, April 4, a bill to extend a moratorium on construction of costly radiation treatment centers in 14 counties including the Twin Cities metro area.

The moratorium has been controversial since it was established in 2007, when it served to block development of a new radiation center in Woodbury.

Radiation therapy delivers high-energy radiation to reduce or kill cancer cells. In 2012, there were 58 external beam radiation therapy machines operating in 35 radiation therapy facilities across the state. Thirty-three of the machines were located in the metro area.

Scheduled to expire in 2014, the current moratorium blocks development of radiation treatment centers by operators other than hospitals in the metro area, St. Cloud and Duluth.

Moratorium supporters say it protects hospitals from unfair competition from other operators of cancer treatment centers not subject to hospital regulations who might cherry-pick patients with good health insurance. They also contend the moratorium helps prevent a costly duplication of radiation treatment centers, each of which can cost several million dollars to build and equip.

Opponents contend the moratorium hurts patients by blocking the development of radiation treatment centers that might be located closer to their homes. They also argue that the current law is unfair because it allows hospitals in moratorium counties to add machines, but no one else.

The bill scheduled for debate Thursday from Rep. Kim Norton, DFL-Rochester, would extend the state’s moratorium until 2020. In subsequent years, the bill would establish rules for developing new centers that opponents say would effectively make the moratorium permanent.

“We are against it,” said Dr. Tom Flynn of Minnesota Oncology, one of the state’s largest cancer clinics. “It limits (patient) choices as to where they get their care, and it could require them to travel further than they otherwise might have to at a time when they are sick or weak or nauseated or potentially in pain.”

“We’re supportive of it,” said Todd Freeman, an attorney who represents Minneapolis Radiation Oncology, a physician group that provides radiation treatments at many hospitals in the metro area. “There is more than sufficient capacity to meet the needs for radiation therapy in the Twin Cities metropolitan area.”

The debate over who should be allowed to open radiation therapy centers, and in what locations, has been a perennial issue at the Legislature for a decade. In 2003, the Legislature passed a bill that limited the ability to construct radiation therapy facilities across the state to entities that were owned, operated or controlled by a hospital.

In 2012, the Legislature funded a study on the expected need for treatment facilities in Minnesota over the next decade. The report, which was completed in March, documented the expense of the radiation facilities even with the moratorium.

From 2007 to 2011, about $257 million was committed to capital projects at radiation therapy centers across the state, according to the report.

“What we learned from the analysis is that there is sufficient treatment capacity for radiation therapy in the state, assuming past patterns hold true about the incidence of cancer, how technology evolves and patient preferences in selecting treatment,” said Stefan Gildemeister, director of the Health Economics Program at the Minnesota Department of Health.

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